Have you seen Rashomon? Storytelling-wise it's the same premise; you have one story told from three different points of view. They all contradict each other, but they complement each other too. None of your characters are lying.

B: Would you say that we have to play all three characters to fully understand the story?Nikolay: It's complex. For me, of course you do. In the new version of Pathologic... the same play, but the new performance.. as if the same situation would be seen by some other men – actually, we are these very people! But we are different. I have become different. That is why I am telling the same story, but in quite new words. And the visions of these three healers tend to be much more different than they used to be. And their pictures of the world, and their understanding of what's happening is much more different than what it used to be in the original game.

So when Ivan, for example, suggested that “okay, we're having some trouble with the release date, so let's release it partially, yes?” with, for example, half a year breaks, I said “Never.” He said “Why? People would play it anyway. First it would be one playthrough, then the second, then the third – why not?” For me it's quite impossible. You must understand that this is a stereometrical story, which is seen by three different points of view. Actually, for me, some players must – not “must” but “might” – start playing for the Bachelor, and then, on the fourth day, seeing how the Changeling is acting, he leaves the Bachelor and he starts playing for the Changeling, because he wants to understand why he should behave so. And then, maybe, return to his Bachelor playthrough. So it's some stereometry, you know? You want to see it from three different points of view, but in the meantime I didn't want to make it comfortable and easy to switch these points of view during the game process.

Don’t take us wrong: we have received a number of brilliant comments that gave us a good sense of what works and what doesn’t. Some of the game’s elements are being reworked right now, such as:

The unwieldy looting system. Indeed, we don’t want the process of looting to be a mindless clickfest; but it was never our intention to make it so cumbersome as to discourage people. The looting in The Marble Nest is temporary and will work much smoother in the real game.The mindmap notifications and event feedback. Navigating the mindmap is not supposed to be trivial: it should take a moment or two to think over the facts listed, how they connect and what it entails. But we won’t make it unnecessarily obtuse. It will become much easier (i.e. possible) to tell which thoughts are new, which branches have ended, and so on.Trading and barter. First of all, we would like to point out that not every merchant in the town is supposed to be having a constant seizure—the shaking of the screen is a bug. We can also now see that the interface with the green/red bar is confusing. Duly noted.Running, jumping, somersaulting. Real running hasn’t been implemented yet; neither has the whole movement system been balanced at all. There will be a time for you to moan the frustratingly slow movement speed, but it hasn’t come yet.The “plague face” in the silent house being too jump-scary. We will rework the atmosphere of infected houses to be subtler.The confusing fight(s). The fight in The Marble Nest is more or less a QTE that we whipped up to show the general mood we’re going after. The real mechanics behind it have not been implemented yet. But they will. Oh, they will.The goddamn doors.